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William Alfred Knight 1320-1350

If you trace back the “Knight” line of the Pryor family, starting with my great grandmother, Alice Austin Knight, you will eventually reach William Alfred Knight 1320-1350 my 19th great grandfather. On the genealogy web site Ancestry.com there are an astonishing 72,103 descendents of William Knight who have listed him in their family tree. Interestingly, almost all of them firmly believe that William was the illegitimate love child of Roger De Mortimer (The Earl of March) and Queen Isabella (The Queen of England). This fact may or may not be true, the history is inconclusive, but the story is well worth telling, and it all begins with the somewhat incompetent, not very kingly, Edward II…

While King Edward I “Longshanks” was still alive, legend has it he discovered that his son Edward II and another young man where lovers. Longshanks was a seasoned warrior, a veteran of the crusades, a true mans-man and purportedly, an ill tempered lout, so it’s not surprising he promptly threw Edwards lover out a tower window. (Okay, I’ll admit this is the way his lovers death was depicted in the movie Braveheart, which is known to have played fast and loose with history. Scholars generally agree the young man was actually run-through twice by long-sword and then beheaded. Either way he met a tragic end.) To set his son straight, so to speak, the king arranged a marriage between 24 year old Edward and Isabella Capet, the daughter of the King of France who was just 12 at the time. Edward was kind enough to put off consummating the marriage for a good number of years (too many as far as his father was concerned) but fortunately for the royal line, the two eventually got down to business and produced Edward III, heir to the English throne.

When Edward II finally became king, it did not change his nature and he spent a good deal of time with “Hugh the Younger” of the powerful Despenser family, who was his court favorite. In the middle ages, a “court favorite” was the King’s most trusted advisor to whom he could delegate much of the responsibility and complexity of running his kingdom. In other words, Hugh ran the kingdom so Edward could pursue his other important interests such as drinking, cavorting and lounging about. Whether or not Edward II and Hugh Despenser were lovers is open for debate, but there is little debate that Edward was a weak and ineffectual King and the Despenser family held great sway over him.

In the mean time, Queen Isabella grew to despise Edward. She was lonely, trapped in a loveless marriage and forced to eat English food, day in and day out, which I’m sure you can imagine was like torture to a Frenchwoman. Who could blame her for wanting to return to France? After many years of unhappiness, fortune smiled upon her when war broke out between her homeland and her adopted kingdom. Edward asked her to return to France and negotiate peace with her brother Charles IV, who was now King. Not needing to be asked twice, she took her children and immediately returned home where she would remain for the next four years. This is where Roger De Mortimer, the man who may be my 20th great grandfather, enters the picture.

The De Mortimer family had been granted vast land holdings by William the Conqueror for their role in the Norman invasion of England in 1066. Two hundred years later they were a well respected, aristocratic English family. Roger was one of the “March Lords” or “Marcher Lords” which means his land holdings were along one of England’s borders, so it was his responsibility to protect the region from attack. The De Mortimer family’s land was located along the border of Wales in central England. The Marcher Lords, unlike other Lords, had complete jurisdiction over their lands and subjects, without recourse to the king, so in a sense, they ruled their own small kingdoms, which included maintaining their own armies.

Trouble began between the foppish Edward II and the Marcher Lords soon after Hugh “the Younger” Despenser became Edwards’s favorite. Hugh took advantage of his status with the king by claiming the land-holdings of his wife’s family, essentially stealing the land and titles from his two brothers-in-law. These lands, incidentally, were also on the border with Wales, so Roger De Mortimer and the other Marcher Lords were not at all pleased when they heard about it. They realized that their lands were also at risk to the greed of the king’s favorite, so the Marcher Lords eventually rebelled, led by the Earl of Lancaster (the king’s cousin and the second most powerful man in England). Roger De Mortimer’s part in the rebellion ended in January 1322 at Shrewsbury where he was forced to surrender to the English army. He was arrested and imprisoned in the Tower of London. A few days later, he managed to escape the tower by “drugging a guard”. Considering De Mortimer was captured on the battlefield, how he came into the possession of a substance he could feed to a guard from inside his locked cell remains open to speculation. In any case, he escaped and fled to France, pursued by warrants for his capture dead or alive.

Roger De Mortimer was already well established in France when Queen Isabella arrived to negotiate peace with her brother. It’s somewhat ironic that she arrived at the very French court where Roger, the man who had just tried to overthrow her husband, was living in exile. In a turn of events worthy of a poorly written soap opera, the charismatic Englishman soon caught the eye of young Isabella. Away from her husband and starved for male affection, Isabella became smitten with De Mortimer and they began an open affair that was considered scandalous even by French standards. As the affair progressed, the two began planning their eventual return to England. Since Edward II was preventing both from returning (Isabella because she couldn’t stand him and De Mortimer because he would be killed on site) they decided their return would require their own army. It took them two years to raise the necessary support, but in September 1326 they crossed the English Channel and with the help of Henry, the Earl of Lancaster, deposed King Edward II of England. Edward retreated into Wales, but was eventually captured and put to death.

Upon their return to London, De Mortimer and Isabella had the 14 year old Edward III (Isabella’s son) crowned king. Due to the boy’s youth, De Mortimer generously offered to take personal control of the government, and began acting as the de-facto king. It’s said that over the next four years he consolidated his power and increased his wealth, landholdings and titles. He took over the lordships of Denbigh, Oswestry and Clun, and was even granted the Marcher Lordship of Montgomery by Isabella. This angered many of England’s powerful families, even some of Roger’s former allies. After 4 years of De Mortimer’s rule, the Lords convinced Edward III, now 18, that it was time to take back control of his kingdom. In October 1330, Edward III exercised his power and had De Mortimer arrested for treason and assuming kingly powers. De Mortimer was once again placed in the tower of London, but this time he apparently forgot to bring his knockout drops. He was condemned without trial and ignominiously hanged on November 29th 1330. Isabella was put under house arrest by her son, but was never charged with a crime.

It is accepted by most scholars that at the time of Roger De Mortimer’s execution, Isabella was pregnant with his child. The official record states that she lost the baby in childbirth, but others are not so sure. There are reports that the baby was smuggled out of the castle by Isabella’s friend and supporter Adam Orleton, the Bishop of Worcester, and given to a sympathetic family. It would make sense, since a male child of this union would have almost certainly been seen as a threat to the throne and would not have been allowed to live. In case you haven’t guessed, that baby is said to have been William Alfred Knight, my ancestor.

Was William Knight really the child of Roger De Mortimer and Queen Isabella of England? We may never know. There are scant few records from the time to prove or disprove it. But the vast majority of the 72,103 people who list themselves as descendents of William Knight certainly think so. And as a descendant myself, I’m happy to include the Queen of England and one of England’s most notorious traitors in my family tree. Although I do feel an obligation to point out that most sources record William Knight’s birth year as somewhere between 1320 and 1325, 5 to 10 years before Isabella was pregnant with De Mortimer’s child in 1330. But hey, why let that ruin a great story.